Torchlight II co-op could support eight

PC sequel Torchlight II won't so much feature co-op as grouping, developer Runic has said, meaning that parties could house as many as eight players.

What's more, player versus player combat is being thrown in, albeit in an unbalanced, experimental way.

"The sweet spot [of co-op], just from playing in the office, is one-to-four players," Runic boss Max Schaefer told VG247.

"It's an ongoing debate right now where we set the maximum number of players in the game: it'll probably be between four and eight."

On competitive multiplayer he added: "We'll probably enable a PVP mode that's just basically for people to have fun with. We're not going to spend any time trying to really balance it very well, or make particular games for it.

"We want PVP to basically be something where, if you just want to see who's stronger between you and your friend, you can do that."

A conversion of the first Torchlight was announced for Xbox Live Arcade earlier this week. It'll arrive either late next month or in March, with various improvements.

The Torchlight games are strikingly similar to the Diablo games, and Blizzard has gifted Runic a legion of fans by taking so long to make Diablo III.

"They have incredible expectations," said Schaefer of the third Diablo game, "and there's almost no way that they'll be able to please everybody with what they do."

Nevertheless, Schaefer "really respects" Blizzard taking time to "do it right", and admitted he'll buy Diablo III on day one.

Torchlight II will be released in "May", tentatively, and Diablo III is expected to appear later this year.